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WriteOnDoorCounty

Inspiring people to write and share their stories. Everyone has a story to tell.

NEWPORT POETRY TRAIL

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Write On, Door County curates and maintains the Poetry Trail at Newport State Park. Up to 18 poems are displayed on 10 permanent stanchions along the Rowleys Bay and Monarch trails. Available year-round, exhibits change quarterly. The works of local writers, Wisconsin poets, and others are displayed. Contributors include school children, published poets, and the poet laureates of Door County and Wisconsin.

DOOR COUNTY POET LAUREATE PROGRAM

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A selection committee organized by Write On, Door County nominates a qualified individual to serve as the Door County Poet Laureate. The Door County Board of Supervisors approves the nomination. The appointment of Poet Laureate is two years. The purpose of the Poet Laureate appointment is to raise the county consciousness to a greater level of appreciation for the reading and writing of poetry and to serve as a literary ambassador to the community.

Kathleen Ernst

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Kathleen Ernst is an award-winning author, educator, and social historian. She has published thirty-five novels and two nonfiction books. Her books for young readers include the Caroline Abbott series and Gunpowder and Teacakes: My Journey with Felicity for American Girl. Honors for her children’s mysteries include Edgar and Agatha Award nominations. Kathleen worked as an… [ Read On ]

Liza Wiemer

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Liza Wiemer is an award-winning educator with twenty-five years of teaching experience. Hello?, her debut realistic contemporary YA novel, is set in Door County, Wisconsin, and was published by Spencer Hill Press, NY. It was named a Goodreads Best Young Adult Novel. Paste Magazine called it “one the most original novels of the year.” In… [ Read On ]

Barbara Williams

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Barbara Williams is a writer, single parent of two adolescents, a translator, and a reader. Her experience as a reader and writer informs her translation practice, as literary translation calls for a high level of comprehension, familiarity, and comfort with the very nuances that make a foreign-language piece compelling in the first place. She has… [ Read On ]

Vinni Chomeau

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Vinni Chomeau lives in Fish Creek with her husband and daughter. She holds degrees in Outdoor Education and Natural History from Northland College, Environmental Education from Hamline University and has completed graduate courses in Environmental Science from UW-Green Bay. She has worked as a teacher and wilderness guide for the Audubon Residential Environmental Learning Center… [ Read On ]

Anne Haberland Emerson

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Anne Haberland Emerson lives in Fish Creek with her husband, the architect and artist Minnow Emerson. She studied at Lawrence University and UW-Madison and worked as a writer at the University of Chicago Press before coming to Door County to open Edgewood Orchard Galleries in 1969. It was through raising their children in Door County… [ Read On ]

Bill Guenzel

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Bill Guenzel grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, and currently resides in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. He majored in art history and design at Williams College and studied photography and filmmaking at Columbia College. He worked in the Chicago area movie business before relocating to Door County in the mid 1970s to embark upon a career in… [ Read On ]

George Harmon

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I started writing for newspapers as a teenager. At large Chicago daily newspapers I was a reporter and a metro, financial and features editor. At a small Chicago newspaper I was a publisher/editor. In 1980 I joined the faculty of the journalism school at Northwestern and taught writing, reporting, economics, liberal arts, public relations, marketing,… [ Read On ]

Caitlin Oleson

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Caitlin is a 2006 graduate of Gibraltar High School. She attended Eugene Lang College, The New School in New York City obtaining a B.A. with a concentration in history in 2010. She then moved to Edinburgh, Scotland where she obtained a Masters of Science in Nationalism Studies in the School of Social and Political Science… [ Read On ]

Dee Paulsen

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Dee Paulsen has lived in Sturgeon Bay since 1982, with her husband Eric. They have two grown married children, son Nels and daughter Annika, two grandchildren and one granddog. Dee has a B.S. in Elementary/Special Education from the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh and an M.S. in Education with an emphasis on children’s literature from… [ Read On ]

Maggie Peterman

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Stuffed in a back corner of the attic is an old box filled with some of the newspaper stories Maggie Rossiter Peterman wrote during the three decades she spent as a newspaper reporter and daily columnist at The Saginaw News in Saginaw, Michigan. She also has a collection of freelance stories from publications, including the… [ Read On ]

Cameron Rass

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As a student at Southern Door High School, Cameron signed up for a Saturday Write On class taught by Liza Wiemer, whose YA novel Hello takes place in Door County. This was the first time he was able to work with a real author and talk about his dreams of becoming a writer. When the… [ Read On ]

Deborah Hagman-Shannon

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Deborah Hagman-Shannon retired as Executive Director at Chicago Child Care Society (CCCS) in January 2016. CCCS is the oldest nonprofit in Illinois and its work is to provide social services and education for vulnerable children and youth, most of whom live on the south side of Chicago. Programs and services during her 10 year tenure… [ Read On ]

The Coop Finds a Home at Write On

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By Jude Genereaux I shared earlier that The Clearing had declined the offer to take stewardship of it, for reasons only they might know, but the writing muses were at work conjuring up their magic, for in the end, the most perfect place for the Coop turns out to be: in Juddville. Anne Emerson of… [ Read On ]

Map & Directions

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  Write On is located on nearly 40 acres in the heart of Door County, Wisconsin’s northeastern peninsula. [click for directions] 4177 Juddville Rd, Fish Creek, WI 54212 Directions To WODC: From Madison From Chicago From Minneapolis From Iowa City

Our History

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Write On, Door County began as a dream bringing together a small group of people sensing a hunger within our community to explore writing and reading more deeply. It was the winter of 2011 and there seemed to be a renaissance of writing in our schools, our senior centers, and in reading and writing groups… [ Read On ]